Andrea von Ramm (1928–99)

Abstract

No available recording quite does justice to Andrea von Ramm. Perhaps it was something about the quality of her voice that was hard to catch with a microphone. But it was also the way her stage charisma managed to bring the audience far closer to the music than is ever possible for the listener who cannot see her. Tall and thin, with an unusually expressive face, she communicated so much by her bodily movements and her facial expressions that any recording seemed a very pale reflection of her power. Certainly there are many marvellous recordings of her. Nobody who has heard them can ever forget her singing Walther von der Vogelweide's Unter der Linden, Landini's Gram piant' agli occhi or Oswald von Wolkenstein's Der mai mit lieber zal-to name only three that show astonishingly different sides of her art. And these have influenced singers all over the world, even if it is sometimes possible to feel that those followers had picked up the mannerisms without the underlying musicianship. But in her own teaching she stressed creativity above all else. She put immense emphasis on the actual sound of the words, on the need to change the shape and colour of the voice to match the music, on the need for variety and range. In the end everything came down to musical instinct. And that in its turn was perhaps the secret of the way she so often managed to find in a particular work dimensions and features that eluded so many other singers. Every piece she sang was presented with a commitment that is otherwise extremely rare. Born in Parnu, and fiercely proud of her Estonian origins, she came to Munich after studies in Freiburg and Milan, planning to make her career in oratorio. There Thomas Binkley heard her and immediately recognized her potential for medieval and Renaissance music. She became a founding member of the Studio der fruhen Musik, with Binkley, Sterling Jones and Nigel Rogers. Her association with Binkley in the dozen or so years from 1960 was one of the great creative partnerships in the world of early music. By turns passionate, argumentative, bursting with almost excessive enthusiasm for what she did, always full of vitality, she was perhaps the perfect foil to the quieter and more erudite Binkley.